articy:draft

I can see why a company that produces games would want to pick this item up, especially if they are several people working on a complex storyline. Think Final Fantasy or Mass Effect levels of time spent developing the storyline.

But why would I need it? (This may come off as a more aggressive statement that it is actually meant for. I am honestly asking what use I would have of this tool.)

I am a story-teller and I enjoy writing things. I am currently for instance designing my own pen and paper RPG and I have been playing around with game designing tools before, most notable the RPG maker XV ACE.

But what will this tool do for me? I am asking because I am not sure what it provides. Is it a very neatly working Photoshop+CmapTools+Powerpoint? Is the tool only used for drawing up your storyboard or can it be used like the RPG maker and actually create some form of content for a game?

Thank you for all answers(Yes, I am downloading the trial to check it out myself I just want to hear what there is to be said on the subject matter)

As far as I know, there's no 3D modelling tech in Articy. What trailer did you see that in?

OP: Quick thing, you mean RPGMaker VX Ace, not XV Ace. More centrally, there have been a number of discussions about how exactly Articy does--it seems this isn't really made clear by the first few trailers they release, so I'll try to summarize here best I can.

Articy: Draft is effectively a Game Bible creator. Game Bibles, if you don't know your design terminology, are created by game designers to summarize a game's story, characters, items, flow, progression, and maps. A Designer can give this Game Bible to everyone else on a development team, and everyone can do their own individual jobs on creating that product without worrying about continuity errors, and while keeping all of the various pieces of that product in check with one another.

Articy: Draft does that and much more. Articy: Draft is designed for videogames, but also includes options for books and movies, and can be adapted further to things such as pen-and-paper RPGs, or LARPGs. Basically, with it, you can keep track of your world, characters, and story progression.

Now, that's all great-sounding and such, but how does it actually WORK? Basically, Articy lets you create individual components that combine into much larger concepts--I'll go through the hierarchy quickly here.

First, at the bottom rung, you have three sects: Your script, assets, and Features. Articy has a built-in script writer, and you can also import scripts, but it's basically exactly what you expect--it looks like a basic, simplistic word processor. From there, you can grab information and chuck it into Articy, which can be helpful for keeping your continuity straight in dialogue. Features are the basic makeups of Templates, which I'll get to in a second. In a Feature, you can design a form that has variables like Number fields, Boolean values, Text fields, and References to other objects in Articy. Assets are literally just assets--you know, pictures and stuff. Things the art team would make, typically.

On the next rung, you have Entities. They're made up of info from your script, should you have one, plus Templates and Assets. Templates are literally just combinations of Features--so if I have a feature that details Character and another for Central-Plot NPCs, I might have a "Supporting Character" template, which just spits out blank fields for whatever info I might need to detail about a supporting character. You can assign a template to any entity, and you can also plug assets into that entity to give brief ideas of what that entity looks like or what have you.

Entites can be placed around Locations, which you can draw maps of and write info about. You can "put" entities in Locations so that Articy knows there's a correlation between these. Multiple locations can be set as Journeys, which travel from location to location, and the grand total (final rung) of Articy is the Flow. The Flow shows plot progression, character development, branching storylines, discovery of items and locations, and your entire product at a glance.

Okay, that got more complicated than I meant it to, but you get the idea. Articy CAN export to XML, DocX, and whatever they're calling Excel's file extension this decade, but that's less of its central feature: Articy lets you plot and graph out your world, so that you have everything interconnected in such a way that you can keep your plots, characters, and rules in check.

Anyhow. No, it can't be used to create a playable product--it won't replace RPGMaker VX Ace, but it'll enhance it to something much, much greater. For example, designing items in VX Ace's database is easy enough to do, but I've found it's very difficult to ensure that items are balanced and maintain continuity. Also, in larger VX Ace projects, it can become easy to forget where a character is supposed to meet up, or personal traits between characters. Articy would let you design your VX Ace project so that you could spend as much time as possible in VX Ace efficiently, simply transfering the data over from Articy, knowing that it clicks together elegantly.

Do you NEED it? No. Did you NEED RPGMaker VX Ace? No, you could've just learned C++ or Ruby and programmed your own game. Would it have been as effective? Not at all.

Yeah I got it cleared up, thank you.I think I'll defenitely pass on this one. I can see how a company that produces video-games could have use of it but not I as a lone person just writing/creating for fun.

Thank you for explaining the program to me. I have been considering buying this for a couple days for an online dnd campaign on TTopRPG. It seems that it would be worth waiting for a good steam deal, unfortunately.

-Doing story and keeping track of details in word and excel is not ideal but I'm not ready to drop $100 for a polished method.

For what it's worth, though I did pick this up when it was cheaper, I do think it's worth the $100, especially considering a normal license from Nevigo's website is 350 euros. You don't realize how much easier it'll become to keep your stuff organized until you have the program in front of you.

I can say that I see many user areas for this application, right now I'm working out my upcoming website in the tool, making data templates that I will use to model my database, it's really great to get all the information into an easy browsable project for quick reference when working on a project, that said I'm of course using the tool for my game projects as well, I've been waiting for a tool like this for ages, and finally you get everything you need in one neat little package, it really is invaluable to be able to collect all resources and ideas into a contained space where you can extend upon it in a logical and easy mather. This application makes it easy to sketch out a general idea and wait with the deeper aspects till you feel ready to digg into the nuts and bolts of things.

I absolutely thing it's worth the $$$, even for a solo indie/hobby developer, especially for us as we tend to work on many different projects, trying out new angles and such. And don't be afraid to take it outside the box and use the tool for other things that are more entity based, such as webdesign and general project planning!